Missing Scenes, "Enigma"
by Sammie
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. If I did, would Kate be dead? {bares fangs}
Rating: K+, T max.
Spoilers: "Enigma"; some for "Meltdown"
Summary: What happens to Col. Ryan after "Enigma". (Kate/Gibbs)
Author's Notes: the limited POVs change throughout the story.
This is one of those in the string of "I'm not entirely happy with it, but oh, who cares" stories.
Gibbs had asked Kate to conduct the interrogation.
The doctor's diagnosis of schizophrenia for Col. Will Ryan hadn't, of course, ended the case. As Fornell had said, just because he was paranoid didn't mean that there wasn't somebody out to get him. His schizophrenia didn't explain the explosion at his own home, who killed Fornell's man in Ryan's home, and all that. All the agents had discovered was that the conspiracy didn't go as high up as Col. Ryan had thought. It didn't mean that there hadn't been kickbacks; Granger had admitted to it.
It was Director Morrow who had quietly approached Gibbs about talking to Col. Ryan. He was on medication, but they still had an investigation to carry out. The FBI was demanding blood for the death of their agent, Morrow had said, and Fornell had enough on his hands trying to keep them at bay while being fair to their concerns.
Director Morrow had said that they needed to talk to Col. Ryan, to find out what he knew and what he had uncovered. The FBI wanted one of their own to do it; Morrow had refused, despite pressure. Even so, he suggested that Gibbs not be the one to interrogate his commanding officer. Not that he didn't trust the agent, of course, but Morrow was concerned that Col. Ryan might relapse.
Gibbs could find an agent to do his interrogation for him, Morrow had granted, and he could sit behind a one-way mirror and watch if he liked. There would be no coaching from behind the mirror during the interrogation, lest Col. Ryan think that there was a conspiracy going on. If Gibbs couldn't find somebody who'd be sympathetic, Morrow said calmly, he would.
It wasn't that Gibbs didn't trust his director; he did. He knew his boss would find a fine agent to do the interrogation.
It just wouldn't be an agent who could understand how much Col. Ryan meant to him.
He'd arrived at headquarters a little late that morning, three days later, having gone to check up on his CO, only to find Tony hiding behind his computer and pretending to look exceedingly busy. As Tony NEVER even made the effort to do that, even when he was around, he suspected something was up.
He looked over at Kate's desk to find it empty. When he looked back at Tony, the younger man drew a finger across his throat, giving Gibbs the "cut throat" gesture.
That's when he saw Fornell sitting in his desk. "I suppose you heard about the interrogation," the man had said. Without another word, he followed Gibbs to their usual "conference" room.
"Who put them up to this?" Gibbs had demanded the minute he'd shut down the elevator.
"Save it, Jethro," Fornell had replied curtly, shortly. "I got the chewing-out from Agent Todd in the bullpen already."
Gibbs had blinked a moment, surprised. Few things caught him off guard; he hadn't expected this one.
"You'd think she was Ryan's daughter or something," Fornell muttered. "I just came to tell you that I did not know about the trial, but my agents have been briefed by JAG as to their testimony. They'll be testifying for the defense, for Col. Ryan against the private company." He paused. "Well, except Agent Charles. He's working on another one of our cases."
The interrogation was more urgent than ever and required somebody with thorough knowledge of the case. That left only two agents who could do the interrogation - Tony and Kate. Tony was far more experienced with interrogations, but Gibbs wasn't about to let the younger man conduct it.
It was on the days when he thought about Corporal Douglas that he wondered how colored his judgment had been when he hired Tony. Douglas and Tony were so much alike - goofy, fun-loving ladies' men who had so much potential deeply hidden behind ten-year-old mentalities. He'd never say it, but he saw them as younger brothers, sons who needed to be protected in some way from crazy women and to be brought up so as not to spoil their potential. If he could preserve some measure of their innocence, so much the better.
If, however, he made the connection between Tony and Cpl. Douglas, he was sure Col. Ryan would too. Both his old CO and Lt. Cameron had taken particular care to watch out for Douglas...particularly in the cr-ppy choices he made in women. Like the crazy social worker Tony kept dating despite his warnings that she'd eat him alive and that he ought to run.
That left Kate. Kate wouldn't remind Col. Ryan of ANY of the men they had served with, and thankfully she wouldn't remind Col. Ryan of his ex-wives or of Gibbs' own ex-wives. (Wasn't that a stickling point, too. Col. Ryan had finally told him once he couldn't believe a man as intelligent as he was could pick out the women he did.)
So Kate it was.
He'd briefed Kate on EVERYTHING: what not to say so that Col. Ryan might get Gulf War flashbacks, who not to mention, and where not to look. He'd even asked her not to dress in a suit so as not to make Col. Ryan overly suspicious, to bring up memories of 'government conspiracy'.
Soon SHE was rolling her eyes at him. "Gibbs," was all she had needed to say to shut him up. Short, curt, impatient, but that kind of tone never stopped him.
It was the understanding look she had given him.
She understood well what Col. Ryan meant to him, she understood the colonel's state, and most of all, she understood what Gibbs himself was worried about. She understood - she'd never experienced that kind of bond, but she understood that it meant so much to him, and that's all really he wanted to convey to her. She was smart enough to do the rest.
She had wanted to know only one thing, similar to what she'd asked him when they had first committed Col. Ryan. "What happened with Lt. Cameron, Gibbs?"
He was about to ignore her request, not ready and certainly not willing to talk about Lt. Cameron. His response was on the tip of his tongue: "What does this have to do with finding out about kickbacks?"
He turned to deliver the curt put-off when he saw her face. She didn't want to know about the case. She didn't want to know about the schizophrenia, either. She didn't care about the case, not at that moment. She didn't care about Lt. Cameron for Lt. Cameron. Kate was worried for his CO; Kate was worried for him.
Gibbs'd found out from Ducky that both Kate and Tony had been concerned about him, when he'd disappeared off to help Col. Ryan. Tony's worry hadn't been any less than Kate's - but Kate had been utterly determined not to leave Gibbs alone, whereas Tony wasn't about to meddle. There were days that that irritated the h-ll out of him, that she hovered and worried - you'd think he was made out of fluff - but this time.... Ducky had said she'd pressed for information on how to reach out to him.
He had to admit, in retrospect, he had needed his team. Needed them to warn him about Fornell, to get him the address of Granger - to watch his back.
Looking at Kate now, his resolve broke - and for the first time in fourteen years, for the first time since it had happened, he told somebody about Lt. Cameron.
They'd gone to the care center for the interview; Col. Ryan was temporarily living there until the doctors were willing to release him. He'd paced a little on the other side of the one-way mirror, nervous. Tony had wisely kept his trap shut after seeing both his coffee cups.
He needn't have worried.
Kate had been better than he had hoped for or, he grudgingly admitted, than he would have been. It didn't take but ten minutes that she had his CO laughing, and the two of them chatting about boats and Marines who built them. She'd even been able to say 'Gibbs' a few times without getting any pointed reaction.
They got down to business in just the right amount of time, and he had to admit it was interesting, watching her work. Her 'questions' - if one could call them that - were piercing and to the point without being sharp, revealing while being conversational, and soon she had managed to get all the information they would need and then some. He doubted she'd actually asked Col. Ryan anything - yet somehow she'd managed to pull all that information out of him.
Gibbs had to admit to feeling a surge of pride at that.
The first trial, oddly, had been the defense contractor suing the US Marine Corps and specifically Col. Ryan for damages. Kate managed to maintain her composure while Gibbs was there, not wanting to fuel his obvious anger, but the minute he was gone she'd snapped and descended into a small rant herself about these private coroporations with so-called soldiers who shouldn't be working an ice cream scoop, much less a gun.
Later Tony had asked her what her attachment to Col. Ryan was, since Abby had apparently thought he was 'hot'. Kate had been shocked - she certainly didn't have anything against older men (a quite logical response on her part, she repeatedly told herself, and certainly not inspired by any external circumstances) - but she just didn't see Ryan that way.
He reminded her of Uncle Charlie.
At the trial, she'd sat next to Gibbs, both steaming as the corporation lawyer tried to pin the murder of the FBI agent on Ryan. Cmdr. Coleman and Maj. McBurney, despite their differences, had managed quite nicely in defending Col. Ryan and the case was going well.
She could feel Gibbs about to explode when the corporation lawyer got a hold of a nervous Abby, dressed in a powder blue suit and glasses (MacBurney had insisted, Abby said). She was torn apart on the stand; but even then, her forensics were airtight and withheld the cold cross-examination. MacBurney's redirection managed to salvage some of the pieces, but Abby looked visibly shaken when she got off the stand.
Gibbs steamed. Tony put an arm around Abby to comfort her.
Kate vowed revenge.
Oddly, the defense team had Gibbs on the stand only briefly. Kate was surprised, but both MacBurney and Coleman seemed quite sure - even in briefing - that they didn't want him on the stand too long. Gibbs merely looked amused, and when Kate had asked why they didn't want him on the stand, neither Gibbs nor the lawyers said anything about it.
So she ended up one of the major witnesses, put up there by Cmdr. Faith Coleman.
There they were, Navy woman and judge advocate and the former Secret Service protector turned NCIS agent. Normal head-butting was set aside; Cmdr. Coleman was Ryan's lawyer. Kate was not about to let her boss' mentor and close friend be in any way responsible for Granger's actions.
Coleman was polite but pointed, and her questioning went smoothly and without incident, as they'd discussed in pre-trial meetings.
Kate could see the corporation lawyer smirking at the other table, thinking she was going to be a pushover. Kate had half a mind to roll her eyes at him and smack him down right away, particularly after what he'd done to unsettle Abby on the stand, but decided rather that looking the innocent and duping him would be far more fun. And funnier. And entertaining. For herself and others.
So she'd turned off the glare and just sat quietly as he presented the video of the interrogation, and the jury had looked a little surprised at Kate and Ryan's cracking jokes, the laughter. Even the judge had raised a suspicious eyebrow, looking over at Kate sitting there in the witness stand.
So she'd sat on the stand with the same expressionless face, a tiny niggling feeling of worry in her gut.
The corporation lawyer turned to her. "You're an agent, yet you could hardly be considered to have been interrogating," he said condescendingly.
She gave him a placid look and replied sarcastically, "You're a lawyer, but you haven't asked me a single question."
The judge coughed back a laugh. Even Coleman had been bowing her head to hide a smile, and McBurney just outright snickered. One of the officers on the jury snorted in amusement, and titters were heard in the back. Tony grinned and Abby giggled. Col. Ryan turned around to look at Gibbs in amusement.
She gave the corporation lawyer a patient but sardonic look, watching his face flush stop-sign red.
Over that bastard's shoulder, she could see her boss, who straightened in his chair, a grin of satisfied pride and amusement on his face.
When it had become apparent that the bomb in his home had been set by one of Granger's dumb henchman in an attempt to cover up the attack on Col. Ryan and Fornell's Agent Crawson, Cmdr. Coleman and Maj. MacBurney had fought their way to a huge settlement deal. There was no way that his home insurance was about to pay that much for what was a bombing, and the Marine and the sailor had gone after Granger's corporation with a tenacity that had surprised him and just made Gibbs laugh.
Ryan was quite amused now by the entire thing - not the schizophrenia, the feeling of losing Lt. Cameron again - but there were upsides to this.
MacBurney had, while his law partner just sat behind him with a slight smirk on her face, nonchalantly presented the previous trial's transcripts to the judge. Granger's corporation's attempt to sue him had backfired terribly - they had tried to file before forensics could trace the destruction of the Marine's home to them, and when that got out, all hell broke loose. Especially because Admiral Chegwidden at JAG had allowed his two JAs to speak to the press.
Apparently the public was just as happy as the jury that private, rich corporation CEOs bombed the homes of active soldiers with schizophrenia.
Ryan now had more money on his hands than they really knew what to do with, payment of all the damages to his home. Tony had joked that he was going to be the first divorced Marine to be able to buy his own boat - stopping mid-sentence when Kate's "Tony!" let him know that Gibbs - and he - were standing right behind him. Tony had apologized profusely.
Ryan had felt a small pang, watching Gibbs and Anthony DiNozzo. DiNozzo reminded him so much of Corporal Douglas - tons of potential, little brains when it came to women.
Ryan had been staying in the hospital, then with Gibbs for those months that his home was being rebuilt. His team and Ryan's lawyers were always in an out - talking about the case and so on - and more than once he'd heard Gibbs' mumble that his house had turned into a Dairy Queen.
"You could lock the door, you know," Kate had pointed out in amusement, and had only gotten a look.
He'd gotten to know Gibbs' team: that elderly ME, his laidback and quite funny assistant, Gerald. Abby and Tony - some days he got tired just watching them. No wonder Gibbs drank so much coffee - he needed all that caffeine to keep up with those two. But, Ryan chuckled to himself - they kept him young.
Then there was Kate. Ryan was forever grateful to the young woman, and felt a particular, fatherly attachment to her. She was the first to come to him and guide him successfully back into that mire that had brought him to the U.S. - all without causing a relapse. She walked the fine line of probing him for information and keeping him mentally stable. He had to admit he'd been surprised by how much she'd managed to extract from him, reading back over her notes after the trial. He hadn't realized how much he'd said. It had all been so...conversational. Non-threatening.
He'd seen how his former Marine looked at her. He'd seen Gibbs' face when Kate's "interrogation" had been over - the surprise, the pride, the satisfaction written over his face. He had seen Gibbs' carefully masked anger before the trial, and then the amused satisfaction when Kate had managed to tear apart the corporation lawyer from the witness stand.
When he'd built that home - the one destroyed by the bomb - his wife (now ex-wife) had done all the decorating, the furniture buying. He had to admit he was at a loss as to what to do. The first day he'd had those home catalogs out, Abby had picked out lots of black furniture.
Kate had a flair of style, with an overlying practicality. She was good with money - Gunny Gibbs had said that she hadn't grown up rich - and quite flexible. He and Gibbs had trudged along as she'd dragged them to furniture store after furniture store, picking out the pieces to go into his home. They'd had long discussion of what he wanted beforehand, the three of them gathered at Gibbs' dining table - and if the two Marines were lucky, devouring some of her baking. Trips into the stores were quick, efficient.
Ryan had to admit, half the time he wasn't sure what he'd bought. Part of it was that he was only vaguely paying attention, trusting Kate and Gibbs' judgment.
Most of it was he was amusing himself, watching his Marine turned NCIS agent and his Secret Service turned junior NCIS agent.
Ryan suspected Gibbs didn't know how often he watched Kate, how often his eyes swept over her and then settled on her face. Ryan had been surprised - he knew Gibbs had this strange addiction to redheads - but this brunette had captured his attention. When they disagreed, it was lively but fair, and Ryan suspected that Gibbs enjoyed it more than not. She didn't take crap from him.
They were now sitting in his new home, rebuilt, refurbished. Abby and Tony were outside with Gerald, looking at the boat. Inside, Ducky was chatting with Kate, Gibbs sitting nearby with a small, amused smile on his face.
Kate said something, and Ryan watched with quiet amusement as Ducky laughed. He could see her eyes sparkling, and when he looked over at Gibbs, he could see that look on the younger man's face, one of contentment. It was so rare on that man - and Ryan had never seen it when Gibbs was around with a woman, even with one of his wives.
The Marine entered his new living room, dropping into one of his new, comfortable recliners. "Kate," he said, using the name so familiarly. "I gotta thank you. For helping me with all the furniture stuff."
She blushed slightly, then said, "I just hope it doesn't feel too alien and un-homey to you."
Ryan laughed. "No, it doesn't," he replied, leaning comfortably back into the chair. When they had been planning on how to fix up his new home, Ryan had mentioned he didn't care much about the furniture - he just wanted to feel at home, and not feel like a stranger in his own house. "Feels good. Comfortable. Without looking like a man who's scrounging up loose furniture after a divorce." He winked, and the others chuckled.
After a few minutes more of some talk, Kate and Ducky headed out to look at the boat, leaving the two Marines sitting in the living room. Gibbs leaned back against the new couch, relaxed. "This feels better than my bed at home," he commented, looking up at the ceiling. "I oughta get one of these. Maybe for the basement, too."
"Maybe you oughta get Kate to redecorate your house," Ryan kidded. "Saves you the energy to think about it, anyhow, and Kate does a good job."
Gibbs snorted, still leaning comfortably on the sofa. "Colonel, you ought know - go furniture buyin' with a woman, might as well get her a ring."
Ryan just smiled, and after a moment, he pulled himself up to standing as he started to head outside. He looked down at the Marine he'd commanded in battle and gave a small chuckle. "Well, Jethro - Kate? May not be such a bad idea."
Ryan sauntered out of the living room towards the back yard, a small smile on his face. He didn't have to turn around to see the expression he knew would be on Gibbs' face.
END
Author's Chapter Notes:
What happens to Col. Ryan after "Enigma".